


Reveal: The Truth About Max Banes or (Every Little Thing)

by BenLMoore



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Between the Scenes, Episode 12:20, M/M, Sex Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-16 06:18:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11248050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BenLMoore/pseuds/BenLMoore
Summary: Dean had no desire to see the Banes' again. The first meeting not only made a lasting impression, but left an indelible mark - an emotional scab, he'd rather just leave alone.But Alicia directly asked for help and Sam loaded the car for Wyoming.What's the worst that could happen?





	Reveal: The Truth About Max Banes or (Every Little Thing)

**Author's Note:**

> There was just too much promise in that 'tour of the car' moment  
> And I had just finished reading a slew of bi-Dean articles
> 
> As always comments and kudos are rolled in like mud.  
> :)

Dean taps his fingers on the steering wheel. Not in time to the music. Too fast, non-stop, like he’s got some kind of tick.

The worst part about being nervous is not whatever you’re nervous about; it’s the goddamn nerves themselves. Dean ganked his first big-bad when he was nine years old. Nothing makes him nervous.

Hardly anything.

Max Barnes is a witch, but he’s no monster. The nerves are stupid and Dean hates himself for them.  
What’s the worst that can happen?

“You good?” Sam’s brow is raised damn near to his hairline.

“Awesome.”

“Dean.” Sam looks at him like he’s under a microscope. “It's green.”

Dean blinks up at the traffic light as it turns yellow. He punches the gas and peels out.

“Do we need to talk?”

“Shut up.”

 ***   ***   ***

Nothing worse can happen than went down the first time John Winchester's boys met Max and Alicia Banes.

There's nothing like a hunter’s funeral to make Dean Winchester desperate for proof of life. That’s why he usually avoids those things like the plague. There was no way around this one, though. He and Sam had followed their mom into that lion’s den, for better or worse.

Somewhere around the eighth flavorless Labatt Blue, mild curiosity about what Max's mother had taught him on the art of seducing men had been fanned into a vicious craving.

The truth is, the seduction wasn't even necessary. This handsome, cocky kid reminded Dean too much of himself for the attraction not to be narcissistic. And he was more than willing to see any trick that could make a mortal man temporarily forget how soon he’d be following Asa Fox, John Winchester, Bobby Singer, Rufus Turner, and a long list of fine hunters who found themselves on the wrong side of a fang, a claw, or a curse.

Dean grinned as Max closed the door behind them.

"Alright David Copperfield. What you got?"

Mama mia, and did Max Banes have tricks. Up to that point, porn star Suzy Lee was the crown jewel of Dean’s sexcapades. Suzy was good. She was gifted. Every little thing Max did was … well, about what you’d expect.

The Kid slipped to his knees and gazed up at Dean with crazy hazel eyes even more variable than Sam’s. At the same time Dean saw hazel, he also saw moss-green staring down at him in wide-eyed awe. The warm swirl of an expert tongue around the head of his cock was accompanied by a sour-salty burst of pre-come into his own moaning mouth. When he entered Max the first time, Dean felt himself being penetrated and fell apart in a matter of minutes.

Generally speaking, Dean liked to say that he hated magic. But goddamn it, there have to be some perks to this job and he’d take enchanted sex over a 401-K anyday.

***   ***   ***

Seeing that kid's face again did a tighten-swoop-flip thing to Dean’s gut that was neither pleasant nor welcome. That was about the worst thing that he had imagined happening, and there it was.

Dean and Sam and Alicia and Max standing there by that lake, shooting the shit, all casual. A wicked wind whipped Sam's hair was all over his face, which was distracting as hell. But all total, no big deal. Missing mom out on a case. He and Sam had been down that road. This would be cake. Babysitting, basically.

Then Max dropped that line about the bartender. Dean clenched his teeth and considered decking him in his pretty face. But the others didn’t flinch because they didn’t know. Alicia didn't even bat an eye, Sam sure as hell wouldn’t have caught the reference.

“Dean. That car is still major.” Max’s lazy growl did a number on him, but that one word made it so much worse.

‘Major’ twisted up Dean’s insides. He hadn’t forgotten that Max had used that weird, Canadian slang to describe Dean’s gear shift, so to speak.

After a few hours alone with this guy, they'd devised a fucking code. Maybe that was part of the magic, and maybe Dean should have just ignored it. Instead, his heart rate kicked up and his mouth offered the kid a fucking tour of the Impala before it had conferred with his brain.

Max grinned. "Definitely."

Dean cracked open the trunk, prepared to give an actual overview of his weapons, in case he had read more into Max’s taunts than was there.

“Is that a grenade launcher?”

“Yes, she is... " Dean immediately regretted his choice of words.

He hadn't meant to imply that only girls could be as gorgeous, high-powered death machines like Annette. He was already fucking this up, if there was even anything there to be fucked up.

A change of subject could only help. Dean picked up and held the box of shiny witch-killing bullets in his palm. Max winced at the introduction.

Of course, he did. He’s a fucking witch. How’s about he show you his favorite hunter-killing spell, ass? Got an incantation for extricating foot from throat? When all else failed, Dean knew a trick called shutting the fuck up.

But he seemed to have forgotten how that one went. “Only certain witches. Wicked ones. Not--”

“Stop talking.”

Dean dropped a bullet into Max’s hand without making contact with his skin. As Dean recalled, his hands were warm and soft. . Max held the round up between his thumb and forefinger, inspecting with one eye shut.

“You told your sister not to call us.” Dean watched his reaction out of the corner of his eye.

“Because it's under control.” Max offered the bullet back to its rightful owner. “And I didn't think you'd want to see me again.”

 “Why would you think that?”

“Because you thought it.”

“I asked you not to read my mind again.”

“Didn't have to.” Max traced a thumb over Dean’s brow, sending smoke signals down his spine directly to his cock. “You have incredibly expressive eyes.”

Dean nodded, not wanting to use any more of the wrong words and unwilling to say ‘ditto,’ even if it was true.

“Did you want to come? Here, I mean. Did you want…”

Dean shook his head. He would have much rather stayed in the bunker trying to figure out what to do about Castiel, Kelly Kline, and Lucifer Jr. Some things Dean Winchester knew how to deal with: angels, demons, yet another impending end of the world. Max Banes was not on that list.

“See?”

“Not because of you. Not like that. Not that I didn't want to see you.”

“You don't do attachment. I know.” Max’s know-it-all smirk never seemed to falter. “I saw that when we met. And Sam still doesn't know you do guys.”

“I don't do guys.”

“That you've done guys.”

“Two,” Dean clarified. “You and…”

“I know. The bartender.”

“Having done two guys doesn't mean that I do... guys.” A bona fide gay guy really ought to know the actual definition and that Dean Winchester did not fit that bill.

“Fine,” Max said. “Anyway, I'm glad you're here, even if it was unnecessary.”

He started to walk away, and Dean grabbed his arm. “Hey … Good to see you, too.”

Max nodded and tried to pull out of Dean's death grip on his sleeve. He glanced down at Dean’s hand. “Is there something you want?”

For just a moment, hazel eyes glowed violet. When their lips met, Dean's entire body buzzed with the combined electricity of their attraction. He pulled back and blew out a small breath. Max gave a smug smirk right out of Dean’s arsenal.

“Hey," Dean said. "The bartender thing? Not funny.”

Max chuckled and patted Dean’s cheek, as if he was the novice. Dean could admit, but only to himself, that the kid was probably right.

***

It seemed like a hundred lifetimes ago that Sammy had left for Cali. More than half of Dean had considered following that bus across the country, begging his little brother to come back.

He sure as fuck wasn’t going to do that, but there was also no point going back to the motel. Their dad had already been passed out when Sam went to say goodbye. So Dean pulled out of the Greyhound parking lot, drove directly to the nearest bar, and drowned every part of himself that would have made a deal with the devil to have Sam beside him.

In the process, he became something he had never thought he would be: a chatty drunk. He couldn’t remember the details he had whined and slurred to the bartender. It was probably something along the lines of, ‘After everything I’ve done for him... the selfish bastard… use use use… take take take…’ because that sure as hell was what Dean thought when he was sober.

At some point, Corey refilled his glass and nodded in sympathy. “So, your guy just up and left you, huh?”

Dean’s jaw damn near came unhinged. “Wait. What? No. No, that's not-”

“It’s all right, man. You’re among friends in here.” Corey pointed to a rainbow flag in the corner.

After that, Dean had only opened his mouth to pour more whiskey down his throat.

There hadn’t been a lot of ceremony or discussion. At the end of his shift, Corey hung his apron on a hook behind the bar. He hadn’t even bothered to whisper, just leaned over the bar and said, “Meet me out back,” like he was giving Dean directions.

Maybe that’s why Dean didn’t question it. He didn’t even think to ask, ‘Why? What’s going to happen out back?’ He stumbled to the can and then out, through the muggy late summer air into the alley, where he found Corey waiting with his hand in a tub of Crisco.

***

When Sam offered to go pick up the food, Dean thought about joining him. Sitting on the sofa, drinking himself loose, and watching the beautiful Baneses laugh and talk sounded a hell of a lot better. He poured the contents of Sam’s wine glass into his own, sat back, and got cozy.

Every now and again, Max would grin over, but he never broke the animated, apparently hilarious conversation he was sharing with his sister. They were just like him and Sam, except happy.

When Tasha Banes took the spot beside him on the sofa, Dean couldn’t help finding Max’s lips in her features. He was there in the slope, though not the width of her nose. Having seen pictures of Asa, he knew Max was a perfect blend of his parents. Dean was on the verge of saying something to that effect when he thought of his own mom and gave the Banes’ family a different compliment entirely. What made the Baneses beautiful ran way beneath the surface.

The moment Dean had a flicker of a daydream of what it would be like if Tasha was his mother-in-law, he declined all further offers of alcohol. He was just planning to meet the kid to bone for God’s sake. Thoughts like that were precisely why Dean hadn't wanted to see him again. But, if he’d been honest enough with himself to jump onto that train of thought, he’d have known the flicker of fantasy was more about what it would be like to have a mother who was warm and welcoming with an embrace that lingered and a voice that dripped with tenderness when she spoke her children’s names.

Having his mother back had only been a source of heartache and confusion and who the hell needed more of that?

Not a moment too soon, Sam returned and called him to check out the poster of the missing guy. Just like that, the reverie was over, the hunt was on again and a mystical rendezvous was the farthest thing from his mind.

It wasn’t until Max was coming down into the cellar that Dean realized he should have texted and called it off. Max had probably seen the light and expected that this was Dean's suggested meeting place. He had played off seeing Sam beautifully.

Nothing could have prepared any of them for Max finding his mother’s heartless corpse.

 

~~~

 

There was no Crisco with Max. His lube was sandalwood scented. He’d spent a full half hour anointing Dean with sweet almond oil. By the time Max was done worshiping his body, with a touch so firm it damn near hurt, Dean wasn’t thinking about his mortality anymore. He felt alive and serene and vaguely as though someone could put a sticker on him that read - Property of Max Banes - and he wouldn’t protest.

His eyes had long since slipped closed. A faint thrum in the room caused them to open again in time to see Max’s eyes had begun to glow violet. Dean tensed and the light diminished.

“Do you mind?”

“What are you going to do?”

Able fingers raked long lines back and forth over his scalp. “Make love to you.”

There wasn’t a cell in Dean’s body that could have argued with that.

Max removed his slacks and straddled Dean’s hips, smile all confidence and heat. With a palm hovering directly over Dean’s heart, the air between them thickened, and Dean began to question his sanity. He was drunk and horny, but was he prepared to let some kid fresh out of Hogwarts jumpstart his heart just for the sake of a more intense orgasm?

“Is it alright?”

“Do you usually ask first?” Dean notched up the hostility into his voice, in case this kid had forgotten who he was fucking with.

“I don’t usually do it. Not this.”

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “So then, why now?”

“Because I need it.” Max paused for few more seconds, giving Dean ample time to stop him. “Reveal.”

The moment their skin met again warmth surged over every inch that Max had massaged, which meant every inch of Dean, as though he was fully submerged in a bath. Then, for lack of a better way to describe the sensation, the bathwater seeped through his skin and coated his insides with a heavy sorrow.

"Max..."

"Don't... don't speak. Words dilute it," Max said. "Just be with me."

The moment Dean let his eyes slip shut, the sorrow dissipated into serenity.

He was a child raising his hand to touch palms with the tiny hand on the other side of the flimsy veil of fabric. It was just the way it had been when the world was all darkness, a steady lub-dub rhythm and the voice of the goddess who gives them milk now. But this little one was always there. They had always been two parts of a whole, separated by a thin membrane, but always together.

Dean’s adult mind unpacked the vision until he understood that he was sharing Max’s recalled experience. His own memory came like a reply. Dean sat in his little rocker, sitting perfectly still, palms up and arms out to receive. Then he blinked down at this tiny life in his hands with the inexpressible feeling this was not the first time they’d been together. Multi-colored eyes stared back up with that same recognition and more intelligence than anyone would ever believe an infant could possess. Dean’s whole little body welled up warm and then hot and then tears were streaming down his cheeks. His father moved to take the baby. “It's alright, buddy.”

Dean clutched his brother to his chest, refusing to let him go. Clueless, his parents laughed and snapped photos. Dean’s heart beat double-fast as he strove to understand where he could have seen Sam before when he knew this was the first time. He was old enough to understand that his brother had just been born and young enough to know there was more to the story than that. So he just sighed, let the baby curl its fat fingers around his, and whispered, "Hi, Sam."

When Max thought of his mother, Dean smelled lavender and felt coarse, crinkly hair between his small fingers. She nuzzled his cheek and hummed a lullaby. Dean remembered a time of bacon and tickling in his own youth, a time of tuneless singing and baths in the sink.

Max wiped a tear from Dean’s cheek, his cockiness melted into affectionate. He closed his eyes again. Dean did the same and saw the ground slowly receding from beneath his feet. And he felt no fear because he wasn’t Dean. He was Max - exhilarated, blood on fire, laughing, filled with pride until he looked down into the scowling eyes of his father.

“Asa?” Dean gasped out loud and looked to Max for confirmation.

Max’s eyes remained shut. “Sh.”

His mother stood on the porch of the log cabin with her arms folded over her chest. She was wearing that swishy ankle-length skirt that Max loved to use as a tent. His father turned and shouted at her, “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?”

“He’s going to be a brillia--”

“He’s going to be killed, Tasha! This isn’t Oz. Hunters don’t differentiate between good witch and bad witch. You’re going to teach him that it’s okay to be like this. He’s going to slip up in the wrong company, and somebody’s going to put an end to him.”

Max’s blood ran cold as his father stormed off, leaving Tasha on the porch and Max hovering, shuddering, light as a feather at the top of the maple in their front yard. He had come to rest on a branch too thin to hold his weight naturally. Instinctively, he held it himself.

His mother shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand, and spoke to him in a voice so quiet, he could only hear it when he silenced everything else around them.

“Never be afraid of who you are. And never apologize for small-minded people. Your father will come around. Or he won’t.”

“God dammit, boy. Pick up your feet!” John Winchester shouted directly into Dean’s ten-year-old ear. “You want to get ganked out there? Get me and your brother ganked out there, because of your slow ass pussy footing like you're going for a Sunday stroll? That’s what you want? You working for them now?”

“No, sir?”

“What?” A glob of spit flew from his mouth and landed hot on Dean’s cheek before it was washed away in the rain.

“NO, SIR!”

“There's something on your tail, you gotta haul ass. Werewolf, vampire, they can outrun you and gut you with their teeth. Shifters are naturally stronger and wily as all hell. Witches won't let you get within ten feet before they blast your ass. You have to be twenty times better than average just to survive. You want to win? You want to kill them? You have to be a hundred times better. That means a hell of a lot better than you are now.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Now, run like your fucking life depends on it, boy.” His father shoved him.

Dean stumbled forward and landed on his hands and knees in the mud.

Somehow, the memory wasn’t anywhere near as heavy as it usually was. Everything Dean had shared with Max, the beauty was twice as vivid, the pain half as dense. The bacon had been twice as fragrant.

How different would it have been to meet Max and talk like a couple of normal people? How much of what they’d shown each other could be conveyed in words like, “My little brother/sister, great memories of my mom and a hardass father.”?

And still the view from Max’s memory kept playing in Dean’s mind as Dean’s perspective.

Thirteen years old, Max swallowed thickly as he looked into dark brown, almost black eyes. The boy, Chris (Dean knew his name because Max knew his name, sighed his name, doodled his name), smiled back, hand rubbing up and down his back, soothing, calm. He'd done this before. With who? A twinge of jealousy and no time to think about anything else before his lips were on Dean’s lips. Max's lips.

Dean thought immediately of Rhonda Hurley, but somehow before she even crossed the room in his memory, she morphed into Corey, the bartender. Dean knew everything Max felt and thought in his memories. That meant that Max was fully aware that when Corey sank his Crisco-covered-cock into his asshole, Dean had wished it was his baby brother.

He sat bolt upright on the bed and grabbed Max's throat. "Get out of my head."

Max’s face remained placid, like it was a daily occurrence, being choked before sex. “The connection breaks when you're ready.”

“That means you…”

“We're talking. That means I hear your voice, I feel your hand, and I see on your face that you are very uncomfortable.”

Dean was on the verge of combustion, breathing hard, pulse pounding in his ears. ‘Reveal’ is a good one. Max now had the one piece of information about Dean that no one else on Earth was ever meant to know.

“You're safe. With me,” Max said. “You're safe.”

Dean let go of his neck and rubbed his hands down his face. “Fuck you. Get off me.”

Max didn’t move. His hands hovered near Dean’s head.

“I swear to God, if you touch me...” Dean grabbed Max hips in his oil-slick hands and started to push him aside.

“Dean.”

Dean was shivering and it wasn’t all that cold.

“I just want to show you.” Max’s hands landed gingerly on either side of Dean's head. Again, he whispered, “Reveal.”

Soft strawberry-glossed lips against Dean’s cheek. Against Max’s. Trembling hands gripped his shirt. He smoothed back dark hair. "She'll be back soon."

Alicia nodded as Dean’s body rose and crashed into her again. Max's body. Into Alicia's. She had needed this and Max could be honest enough with himself to admit that he had needed it, too. He had needed to release and reconnect and reveal. Not with some nameless hunk of meat in a pick-up truck on the side of the road, and not with some well--to-do daddy, but with the other half of himself. He needed to be with her completely to become himself again.

Max retracted his hands from Dean’s skull and swallowed thickly, awaiting a response.

What could Dean possibly say? He couldn't exactly condemn the guy, considering he was the same kind of freak.

"Is it all of us? All siblings, I mean?" Dean asked, knowing how ridiculous the question was.

If all siblings were fucking or wanted to, it wouldn’t be the unutterable thing it was.

Max chuckled. "I don't think so. Just the especially fucked up ones. There's a lot of that in hunter families, I guess."

“Great.”

“It’s not about sex. It’s about closeness. Comfort,” Max said. “I don’t…I’m not attracted to women. It’s not about that with Alicia. I don’t think it’s about that for you and Sam. It doesn’t take a spell to tell how into you he is. Anyone with eyes can see it. Now,” Max cleared his throat, found Dean’s eyes, “Shut up. Please.”

Max stared into Dean’s eyes, rocking his hips back and forth over Dean’s cock until he was ready again. With Dean’s between his cheeks, but not yet inside of him, Max placed his hand over Dean’s heart again and murmured the spell.

All Dean saw was water, for miles and miles, all the way to. the horizon. He sat on a pier, watching the sunset, feeling so empty and lost and alone. The ache of that solitude pierced him, then halved, still bitter, but bearable.

The image Dean’s mind conjured in response was of Sam standing by a pyre. Dean hovered above his brother, regarding the torch in his hand, knowing that the body to be burned was his own.

“Reveal, Dean,” Max whispered out loud, his magic reaching for something deeper. His hand stroking Dean’s face. “You’re safe.”

Max had exposed his own deepest fear: an eternity of solitude. He waited for Dean’s.

The scene changed. Dean was no longer floating disembodied above his brother, but standing alongside the pyre. Dean’s body broke into a shudder intense enough to split him down the middle. In his imagination, he closed his eyes again to keep from looking at the body meticulously wrapped in white. Dean’s insides crackled and boiled even before the flame was lowered.

Alicia lay on a bed in a dark room; Dean as Max stood at the door. He reached out his hand and allowed her body to be consumed in an inextinguishable blaze.

The torment that rose up in him was unbearable. Just for a moment, it was more pain than any one person should have to bear. Then, it was swallowed by a tight heat as Dean entered him and Max received him. All the agony, the terror, the shame, the darkness receded into lilac light.

***

Max cupped his sister’s head in his hands, begging, pleading, splintering, breaking, disintegrating into ash and dust over her body. Dean pulled Sam to the side and whispered, “You… head down to the cellar. Prepare those bodies. I’ll check the rest of the house.”

Sam gave a curt, obedient nod, took one more heart-shattered look at Max and Alicia and went to do as he was asked. The moment his brother stepped from the room, Dean took Max’s hands and led him to the sofa. He had sat here with a near enough imitation of Tasha Barnes to convince her children.

He took Max's face in both of his hands and forbade him to look at his sister. “Reveal. Share it with me, Max. Just for now. Let me...”

Dean took Max’s hand and laid it on his own chest. Dean braced himself for the onslaught of grief. Max shook his head and refused to speak the spell.

Dean kissed him, one hand around the fingers clinging to his jacket, the other swiping over Max’s smooth scalp. Tears from both of their eyes slipped between their lips.

***

Standing outside of the house, Sam spoke in his gentlest voice, “You're in shock. It'll pass.”

“And then it's gonna hurt,” Dean said, as if he didn’t already know the impossible weight Max was carrying.

"Stop talking," Max begged Dean, "Please."

It was Sam who answered, "Okay."

Dean said nothing because he understood what was being asked of him. The weight, the inadequacy of words.

Even before they drove away, Dean knew. He had seen the intention in Max and couldn't begrudge him. He had also seen all the mischief in Max and knew there was not a drop of evil in the kid. If he were in Max’s position, he'd have already completed the spell to bring Sam back, in any condition at all.

Dean took a deep breath and watched his little brother sleep, resisting the urge to stroke back his hair. To touch him, to be sure he was real and alive and here.

Dean dialed his mother’s number and refused to think of the worst that could happen if he ever saw Max Banes again.


End file.
